I am a young(er? 29) developer and I do most of my development on the .NET stack. No, it's not as "cool" as being an iPhone dev, but at least Ballmer doesn't tell me I can't compile my code without forking him $100/yr...and he doesn't take 30% percent of whatever I might make selling my code.

I work in a mixed shop where most of the other devs are Ruby/Rails guys...they all see me as a "sellout" for using .NET (and maybe I am?)...but when it comes to choosing what platform to learn and code in, I'm pretty happy with Microsoft in general. It's a lot easier for me to find a job doing .NET than it is for them in Ruby/Rails...and in 5 years they'll have to throw out everything they learned about Ruby/Rails because the fanboyism that drives their community will have moved on to the next "big shiny thing" (Scala?)...I'll still be writing code in C#...Does that make me a sellout? Maybe, but I'll take more money for less work and less drama any day of the week.

WTF!!! We had a raid last night, where were you?

They should let Uwe Boll direct it, just for the hilarity of watching him box everyone that hates it.

Flashback to a meeting with a bunch of douchebag MBAs 4 years ago at Goldman Sachs:

MBA Dbag 1: "We'll save so much money by moving these coding jobs overseas to Russia! American coders are getting too expensive!"

MBA Dbag2: "I don't see any drawbacks. Let's do it. As long as they can't outsource us playing phonetag and having meetings with each other all day, right?"

A lot of times, the "Cowboy Coding" is more effective because the "development processes and coding standards" were implemented and enforced by phonetaggers who have never written a productive line of code in their entire lives. Those who are inclined to break them, naturally, are more productive and seem more effective - despite the grumblings of the phonetaggers that they are "unmanageable".

But, really - Does "management" have any right to blame them? They spent the last decade proving to every developer the idea that if you allow yourself or your work to be commoditized, we will ship you or your job overseas where it can be done cheaper. And "development processes and coding standards" are usually implemented with the intent of "commoditizing", to a certain degree, the work of coding....and you're going to blame the *developers* for rejecting that? Middle management in the US basically *created* the environment that forced developers to either become "Cowboys" or to compete with people making $4/hr overseas.

Speaking on behalf of coders everywhere - You can take your "development processes and coding standards" and shove it - I'll keep my job and let you grumble under your breath about how I am "unmanageable", thank you.

Keep a small supply of chocolate (I find that the mini-Doves work best) with you at work for "desk-calls". People will be more inclined to communicate with you early and often (as opposed to after a huge disaster has started) if you bring them chocolate.

Another tip: Be specific when you are explaining you might have to deflect a call. "I have to fix something for Bob right away but I'll see you as soon as I'm done." is much better than just saying "Sorry, I'm really busy and I can't help you right now.".

Again and again...why does *no one* understand the simple principle of CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION? The teachers may have inflated the kids grades...what if you were one of those teachers? And the low-income kids really needed that $500? I would do the same thing; Give everyone an A, whether they earned it or not...would not want to be responsible for them starving...

I was in a similar situation, but where "conflict of interest" was the issue at hand instead of IP/Copyright issues.

Do what I did; Get someone who *didn't* work with you guys to be your "frontman", and have him do the sales...and even say he coded it. Shut up and don't tell the people you used to work with what you're doing and you can't get caught.